British author Alexandra Shulman on our apocalypse-porn obsession

Last weekend, a group of us sat together comparing photographs. Not the usual snapshots of a friend’s newest grandchild or a latest Uniqlo purchase, but images of a Safe Hero Flash Hammer — a gadget no bigger than a penknife.

The claim is that, if you are trapped inside a car after a crash and cannot open the doors, the small tool can be used to smash through reinforced windows, even if the vehicle is underwater.

All five of us ordered one, despite the vanishingly small chance that any of us will ever need it. One especially cautious friend bought four.

Among my friends, doomscrolling through what might be called anxiety porn appears to have replaced property porn as a favourite armchair pastime.

And the Government’s new Be Ready campaign, which encourages households to keep three days’ worth of water and supplies in case of an emergency, has given the habit an extra boost.

We once spent hours searching Rightmove for homes we could never afford and browsing Country Life while fantasising about imaginary country estates. Now that time is devoted to Googling emergency supplies and survival gadgets for the supposedly imminent Armageddon.

Personally, I have done absolutely nothing to prepare.

I cannot understand the rush to buy wind-up radios when replacing a battery is perfectly simple. As for baked beans, I am already well stocked with a larder full of rather more luxurious Bold Bean products.

We also have enough dinner candles to last for several years if the electricity fails. And, being somewhere on the hypochondriacal spectrum, I can rely on a medicine cabinet that is already generously supplied.

As far as I can tell, emergency-preparedness campaigns have existed for years in countries including France, Finland, Sweden and Poland. Ours has appeared only now, perhaps to give the new administration the appearance of doing something practical.

The one step I may take is to keep some cash at home. I shop too much to risk being unable to buy anything if bank cards suddenly stopped working. The greater danger, however, will be remembering where I put the money.

It’s scary how much Halloween’s changed

On the train back from West Sussex on Wednesday evening, I encountered groups of girls dressed in Pretty Woman-style sex-worker costumes, complete with micro-miniskirts, fishnets, chokers and corsets.

They were plainly heading to Halloween parties, where the dress code has shifted in recent years from wizard hats and witches’ broomsticks to costumes that are far more sexually provocative.

These days, Halloween streets are packed not only with small children going door to door for sweets but also with women heading to parties in outfits that can make the scene resemble a red-light district.

And it is not just very young women embracing the brothel-style look.

The Mail’s Diary page recently pictured luxury homeware designer Alice Naylor-Leyland wearing a black leather bustier with matching horns. The Countess of Durham, meanwhile, dressed as a blood-spattered St Trinian’s schoolgirl for a large Halloween celebration.

Whatever became of the straightforward ghost costume made from an old white sheet with two holes cut into it?

Like father, like son in the dating game

Some guys have all the luck. Gorgeous Alexa Chung has confirmed she is engaged to actor Tom Sturridge, who previously had a long relationship with Sienna Miller, with whom he has a daughter, Marlowe. 

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But perhaps it’s not surprising: his dad, director Charles Sturridge – responsible for the 1980s TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited – also has form in the glamorous relationship department. 

Before marrying Tom’s mother, actress Phoebe Nicholls (no slouch when it comes to style), he cut a swathe through London’s desirable girls including the most beautiful of all, Julie Christie.

Builders paper over the cracks… literally

A few weeks ago I wrote about the cracks that have infiltrated the house after the baking hot summer. 

Now, thankfully, the builders have arrived to do something about it. 

Excavating some of the damage, they have discovered that at some point the outside plasterwork was filled with newspapers rather than anything more substantial to clog up the cracks.

I have no idea whether this was common practice, but I was keen to find out how long ago it had been done. 

The date on the newspaper used, the Daily Express, revealed the rubbish repairs were done in 2005 – just a year before the owners sold this house to me. 

Any new buyers can be reassured that 21 years on a better job is being done.

So sad Jennifer does not feel good enough

Jennifer Lawrence, 36, has given an interview to US magazine The Cut, saying that after the birth of her second child she doesn’t think her body is up to scratch and wants to be a ‘sexy mom’ when she drops her kids at school.

It struck me as a curious reason to have a boob job. She is already stunningly good-looking and a first-rate actress, so the idea she felt she didn’t look amazing on the school run was sad if not baffling.

I’ve no problem with her having her boobs done – her body, her temple and all that – but it’s a pity that a woman with all the blessings she has still doesn’t feel good enough.

And all the more so when the people she says she wants to be holding her own in comparison with will be other women – fellow school mums or quite possibly Manhattan’s squadron of Filipino nannies.

Free to roam where a Dragon once roared

The Times Literary Supplement notes that in autumn 1803 the first steam-powered carriage, known as Trevithick’s Dragon (after its inventor Richard Trevithick) roared down an empty Oxford Street. 

The shops were closed and horse-drawn carriages kept away for the occasion. 

Now, 223 years on, the London thoroughfare is newly pedestrianised and cars and buses banished. What goes around comes around.